Archives and Identity in the Context of Social Media and Algorithmic Analytics: Towards an Understanding of iArchive and Predictive Retention

Abstract

The present article reconceptualises the archive in the context of digital media ecologies. Drawing upon archival theory and critical approaches to the political economy of the Internet, I account for new dynamics and implications afforded by digital archives. Operating at both a user-controlled explicit and a state- and corporate-owned implicit level, the digital archive at once facilitates empowerment and enables unprecedented forms of management and control. Connecting the politics and economy of digital media with issues of identity formation and curation on social networking sites, I coin the terms iArchive and predictive retention to highlight how recent technological advances provide both new means for self-expression, mobilisation, and resistance, and afford an almost ubiquitous tracking, profiling, and, indeed moulding of emergent subjectivities.